Giving The LDP Some Credit, Sort Of

even as it has fallen out of grace and into the unbearable position of an opposition party.

I cannot, however, fault the LDP for lax discipline. While the Democratic Party of Japan gave DPJ members of the House of Representatives who voted against consumption tax bill two month suspensions of party privileges -- save for former party leader Hatoyama Yukio, who earned a six month suspension -- and a stiff warning to the DPJ representatives who absented themselves from the crucial vote, the LDP leadership dropped an anvil on former party secretary-general Nakagawa Hidenao for absenting himself from the consumption tax vote: a six month suspension of party privileges. (J)

For Nakagawa, who has tried to keep the flame of Koizumiism alive inside the LDP, abstaining from the vote was a matter of principle. Indeed, in an ideologically reordered political world, Nakagawa would be with his intellectual comrades in the Your Party, rather than waging a quixotic battle against the LDP's mishmash of laissez faire capitalism, paternalism, state capitalism and socialism.

Such is the logic of party discipline, however, that free thinkers face punishment for not following orders.